"A Soldier's Wife" by Marion Reynolds is a poignant and compelling memoir that offers a deeply personal look at the experiences of a military spouse during wartime. The book provides a raw and honest account of the author's experiences as a soldier's wife, and the challenges and sacrifices that come with being part of a military family.
The author's writing style is engaging and vivid, and she does an excellent job of bringing her experiences to life on the page. Her descriptions of life on the military base, the emotions she experiences during her husband's deployment, and the challenges of raising a family on her own are all deeply moving and thought-provoking.
One of the book's standout features is the author's honesty and vulnerability. She doesn't shy away from sharing the difficult and painful aspects of her experiences, including her struggles with depression and anxiety, and the toll that her husband's deployment takes on her and her family.
The book also provides valuable insights into the military experience, including the challenges faced by soldiers and their families, and the impact of war on those who serve and those who love them. The author offers a unique and valuable perspective on these issues, and her memoir is a valuable contribution to the conversation around military families and their experiences.
Overall, "A Soldier's Wife" is a powerful and moving memoir that offers a deeply personal look at the experiences of a military spouse during wartime. The author's engaging writing style, honesty, and vulnerability make this book a must-read for anyone interested in the military experience or the challenges faced by military families.

This is a novel about an Irish woman and her family during the early years of the 20th century through the Irish Civil War of the early 1920s. The author, Marion Reynolds, based the story on her grandmother's diaries so there is a ring of authenticity to the story. Ellen is a young woman, one of four sisters living with their parents in Castlebar, County Mayo. Within a few pages, she has married the dashing young James Devereux, a soldier in the Connaught Rangers, an infantry division in the British army. Soon they are off to a seven year hitch in India. James, as a non-commissioned officer can bring his wife. Upon their return at the end of James' tour and mustering out of the Army, they settle in in Dublin to a very hard-pressed life. The story of Ellen and James, and their children, progresses through James' years in the trenches of World War One and the family's hardships during his years at war. Their sons begin to mature and become caught up in the struggles for home rule and then independence from England.

This is Reynolds' first novel, and her writing style while happily uncluttered, is not particularly sophisticated and in some places rather flat. Nevertheless, especially in the novel's second half, the descriptions of the poverty in Dublin, the tensions that grow around, and within, a family with a father overseas fighting on behalf of the British while at home the British are ever more stridently earning their reputation as the enemy of the Irish nation and people is pretty well done. While I have read several accounts, fictional and otherwise, of the Easter Uprising, and even visited the post office building where the rebels held out, I have never read what seems to be a very realistic account of what it would have been like to be living in a poor neighborhood near the outskirts of Dublin during those days with very little knowledge of what was going on and what all the gunfire and artillery was about.

So, while, as I said, the writing here is in some ways unpolished, the storytelling ends up being rewarding. And while this book appears to be self-published, the is gratifyingly well edited and clean. The novel was, as the cover tells us, "a winner of the 2013 Irish Writers' Centre Novel Fair, an event set up to help introduce up and coming novelists to publishers. The book was published by Indigo Dreamers Publishing, a small independent house based in Devon, England.

Book note: I bought this novel in Vibes & Scribes, a fabulous bookstore in Cork City, during my vacation there with my wife a year ago. ( )

I did enjoy this story and was engaged in Ellen and her family's fate but I did find that the story lagged at times throughout. Overall, I enjoyed the story- especially the historical components. ( )

I appreciate receiving this as a free book but I was a bit disappointed in it. I struggled to read it sometimes putting it down for weeks while I moved on to other books. It was so slow to get into. ( )

I was lucky enough to win this book from LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and enjoyed it very much.

The characters are very beliavable, life-like and likeable. You get to care for them. It's just a nice, normal, brave family, and a nice, normal, brave woman sometimes facing very difficult situations (I won't describe them here at length so as not to give spoilers). Keeps you always interested and it's easy to identify with the characters. Warm and simple and moving, and it doesn't avoid the hard parts.

It could have taken place anywhere, at any time, but the time and places chosen are very interesting: early 20th century Ireland (mainly Dublin) with a colourful seven-year lap in India, the 1st World War and the aftermath in Ireland... It could have begun before, with the parents and earlier, and continue with the story of children and grandchildren. Apparently, the author herself is one of those grandchildren.

But Ellen and James and their love beating odds are enough.

I'm giving it four (and a half) stars out of five.

No wonder it won a historic/literary price in 2013

But Ellen and James and their love beating odds are enough.

I'm giving it four (and a half) stars out of five.

No wonder it won a historic/literary price in 2013 ( )